Planes: Fire and Rescue

For F*** Magazine

PLANES: FIRE AND RESCUE

Director : Roberts Gannaway
Cast : Dane Cook, Ed Harris, Stacy Keach, Danny Mann, Julie Bowen, Wes Studi, Dale Dye, Teri Hatcher, Hal Holbrook
Opens : 4 September 2014
Rating : G
Running time: 84 mins

 

         This year, we’ve seen the release of some highly anticipated sequels: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, X-Men: Days of Future Past, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, to name a few. Here’s one that’s not so highly anticipated, the follow-up to last year’s Cars spin-off Planes. Facing trouble with his gearbox, cropduster-turned-racing-champ Dusty (Cook) is forced to give up racing. Dusty decides to train to become a firefighter, stepping in for aging fire truck Mayday (Holbrook). Reporting for duty at Piston Peak National Park, he is mentored by the gruff Blade Ranger (Harris) and attracts the over-zealous affection of new colleague Lil’ Dipper (Bowen).

            Following the box-office success of Planes, originally intended as a straight-to-video release, one imagines the discussion in the Disney boardroom went something like this: “okay, so we sold lots of tickets and merchandise on that Cars with Wings movie. Let’s rush out a sequel. What can happen in this one?”

“Uh, he becomes a firefighter?”

“What has that got to do with racing?

“Uh, nothing.”

“Great! Now go make that movie.”

            Disney has long been held as a bastion of quality family entertainment, but they’re most certainly not above churning out a production line flick for the sake of making a quick buck. Planes: Fire and Rescue combines another formulaic story with juvenile humour and a few quick, inappropriately dirty gags for the older audience members to snicker at. Just as in the previous film, the animation is not bad at all, given DisneyToon Studios’ reputation as the B-team. The kids will go in for the bright colours and there’s a white water rapids sequence that’s somewhat cool. However, the film fails to muster up any real energy or sense of peril. This is a movie about fighting fires and yet it is largely bereft of thrills or any semblance of danger. Kids want to be excited and wowed too; at least a few will find this film lacklustre - especially when compared with the airborne action of the afore-mentioned How to Train Your Dragon sequel.

            Believe us when we say this: yet again, your personal tolerance threshold for puns will be tested. One of the VIPs at a mountain resort re-opening is “Boat Reynolds”, Dusty exclaims “I kicked As-ton Martin up there!” and apparently, a “George Lexus” produced “Howard the Truck”. Just as the first film had its cringe-inducing national stereotypes with racing planes from various nations, here we get Wes Studi as the Native American helicopter Windlifter, speaking entirely in stock platitudes. There’s not much to say about the voice acting. Dane Cook tries to sound earnest and it’s easier not wanting to punch the notoriously unlikeable comedian without seeing his face. Ed Harris does the “harsh taskmaster who actually has a tragic back-story” thing fine; he’s Ed Harris. Julie Bowen squeaks through all her lines as the clingy, borderline stalker-ish Dipper. The vocal cameos by real-life Hollywood couple Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara as two elderly RVs celebrating their anniversary lends the slightest modicum of charm to the often-grating proceedings. “CHoPs”, a take-off on 70s cop show CHiPs but starring two helicopters, did get a chuckle out of this reviewer.

            The film opens with a surprisingly solemn title card that reads “dedicated to the courageous firefighters around the world who risk their lives to save the lives of others” as noble-sounding horns play in the background. What follows are talking planes, bad puns and a moth-eaten story. We have the utmost respect for firefighters and other emergency servicemen and women – if we were firefighters, we’d be feeling at least a little insulted. At one point, Dipper lowers her retractable wing pontoon, squeezing Dusty next to her. “Oh yeah, they’re real,” she purrs. Real classy, DisneyToon Studios. Real classy.

Summary: Solid animation can’t make up for how rushed, formulaic and alternately unfunny and lowbrow Planes: Fire and Rescue is. They can’t all be Frozen.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

A Million Ways to Die in the West

For F*** Magazine

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST

Director : Seth MacFarlane

Cast : Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Liam Neeson

Genre : Comedy, Western

Opens : 12 June 2014

Rating : NC16 (Coarse Language and Sexual References) / 116 mins

Directed by, starring and co-written by Seth MacFarlane, here’s the film that details why life in the American frontier was hard, no matter what your station. MacFarlane plays Albert, an unassuming sheep farmer in the town of Old Stump, Arizona whose girlfriend Louise (Seyfried) leaves him for Foy (Harris), a dashing, arrogant moustache tonic salesman. Anna (Theron), the wife of notorious outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Neeson), arrives in Old Stump, hoping to lie low while her husband continues tearing up the region. She befriends and soon falls in love with Albert, the sheep farmer unaware that his new paramour is in fact married to the most dangerous man in the land.

            The marketing for this film includes an online flash game that is a funny, entertaining spoof of the classic educational video game The Oregon Trail. Alas, nothing in the film itself quite matches the creativity of that tie-in. A fair number of the jokes in A Million Ways to Die in the West land, but the film is overly reliant on lowbrow bodily-function gags and “shocking”, cartoony violence. The movie’s biggest laughs are provided by the surprise celebrity cameos and a joke involving an offensively-themed shooting gallery gets a satisfying payoff during the end credits. However, one of the best of these was completely spoiled in a TV spot, making this yet another example of a comedy where the laughs are run into the ground by the trailers.

            The film hinges on its main character, Albert the sheep-farmer, being likeable enough that audiences will want to root for him to survive all those million possible methods of death. Seth MacFarlane is not likeable. This is not a controversial statement. A Million Ways to Die in the West would have benefitted from a different lead actor but this being the vanity project it is, that was unlikely to happen. With Ted, he was able to hide behind a computer-generated stuffed toy but here, his shortcomings as a leading man are all too apparent. One adjective often used to describe the Family Guy creator is “smug”. “Smug” is pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum from “hapless, sweet, unassuming and well-meaning”.

            MacFarlane has surrounded himself with an excellent supporting cast, but because he is positioned as the film’s focal point, their presence seems merely perfunctory. Charlize Theron makes for a fun, watchable Annie Oakley-type but as her on-screen husband, Liam Neeson gets the short shrift. While he has slightly more screen time than in Battleship, one can’t help but feel sorry for the actor who has redefined the term “badass” when he’s forced to bare, well, ass. Family Guy fans will be tickled by the casting, since one cutaway gag featured Liam Neeson struggling with his accent in a cowboy film (he retains his Northern Irish brogue here). Neil Patrick Harris relishes the chance to gnaw at the scenery and he certainly rocks that well-coiffed handlebar moustache, in addition to dancing to the Stephen Foster folk ditty “If You’ve Only Got a Moustache”. Giovanni Ribisi and Sarah Silverman are amusing as Albert’s best friend Edward and Edward’s prostitute girlfriend Ruth respectively, if you don’t mind hearing Sarah Silverman graphically describe sex acts.

            A comedic Western in this day and age is a fairly ambitious prospect and something of a gear change from Ted, but MacFarlane fails to mine the opportunities presented by the premise, this outing proving yet again to be too self-indulgent. At 116 minutes long, this does meander and there’s the threat of tumbleweeds, but it would be too harsh to say A Million Ways to Die in the West is completely laugh-free. Co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, who also worked on Ted and Family Guy with MacFarlane, retain a somewhat mean-spirited sense of humour (the poster has a cactus resembling a hand flipping the viewer off) but once in a while do offer inspired gags. Just not quite often enough.

Summary: Doesn’t quite set our saddles ablaze.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong